The Dead Man's Hand: Deadwood, August Two, Eighteen Seventy-Six

James Butler Hickok was thirty-nine years old in the summer of eighteen seventy-six, and the life he had built on his reputation as a gunfighter was catching up to him. He had been a Union scout, a lawman in Abilene and Hays City, a showman alongside Buffalo Bill Cody. By the time he arrived in Deadwood in June, he was reported by contemporaries to be partially blind and looking for one last fortune in the gold rush before retiring.

On August second, he settled into a poker game at Nuttall and Mann's Saloon Number Ten on Main Street. The seat he chose faced away from the door, which was unusual for a man who had spent years watching doors. Jack McCall, a drifter who had lost money in a card game the day before, approached from behind and fired a single shot to the back of Hickok's head.

Hickok fell holding two pairs: black aces and black eights. The hand has been called the Dead Man's Hand ever since. The identity of the fifth card, whether it was a nine of diamonds or a queen of clubs or something else entirely, is disputed in the primary record, and the Deadwood Historic Preservation Office notes that this particular detail may never be resolved. That particular uncertainty is not something later storytelling has been honest about.

McCall was acquitted by a miners' jury in Deadwood. He was then rearrested under federal jurisdiction after leaving town, retried in Yankton, convicted, and hanged in March of eighteen seventy-seven.

Hickok is buried on Mount Moriah above Deadwood, next to Martha Jane Canary, known as Calamity Jane, who died twenty-seven years later. It is a photographic attraction. Whether they knew each other well, as she later claimed, is the subject of a separate dispute.